New York Post

WASHINGTON — They’re burning and beheading victims in the name of Islam, but President Obama delivered a major speech Wednesday on combating violent extremism — while refusing to use the words “Muslim terrorists.”

“No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence and terrorism,” Obama told a crowd that included Muslim community leaders at the White House.

Following months of unrelenting atrocities by ISIS killers who released videos of themselves beheading US journalists and, most recently, 21 Coptic Christians, and burning a man alive, the president kowtowed to the audience by proclaiming that “Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding.”

“Generations of Muslim immigrants came here and went to work as farmers and merchants and factory workers, helped to lay railroads and build up America,” he said.

“The first Islamic center in New York City was founded in the 1890s. America’s first mosque — this was an interesting fact — was in North Dakota.”

And just days after Pope Francis condemned ISIS’s barbaric murders of 21 Egyptians “simply for the fact that they were Christians,” Obama insisted al Qaeda and their ilk “are not religious leaders. They’re terrorists.”

“And we are not at war with ­Islam,” the president said. “We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

In his much-anticipated remarks at a summit on “Countering Violent Extremism,” the president also:

Called on the international community to “eradicate this scourge of violent extremism,” repeating the White House terminology that eschews mentioning religion.

Declared that “we all know there is no one profile of a violent extremist or terrorist . . . Around the world, and in the United States, inexcusable acts of violence have been committed against people of different faiths, by people of different faiths, which is, of course, betrayal of all of our faiths.”

Mourned the “brutal murders” of “three young Muslim Americans” in Chapel Hill, NC, pointing to the religion of the victims even though the crime may have been over a parking dispute.

Pointed to “grievances” of young Muslims living in poverty under corrupt governments, saying that when there are no outlets, “resentments fester.”

Was protective of Muslims in the US. “Muslim Americans feel they have been unfairly targeted,” he said. “We have to be sure that abuses stop, are not repeated, that we do not stigmatize entire communities.”

Obama even acknowledged pundits who have parsed “the words we use to describe and frame this challenge” — a reference to growing criticism about the language deployed by his ­administration.

Obama’s speech included repeated references to Islam and Muslims as he laid out his argument — but he didn’t budge on how he would refer to the self-styled Islamic State.

Instead, he simply referred to ISIS and al Qaeda as “groups” and talked about the need to “vanquish these organizations.”

The summit itself didn’t have Islam in the name.

Although the White House didn’t make the guest list public, attendees at Tuesday’s session with Vice President Joe Biden were mainly from Muslim groups.

Affluent buyers worried about doomsday are snapping up well-appointed bunkers built in a former missile silo.

Upscale doomsday digs: The Luxury Survival Condo, in a former missile silo, includes high-end amenities like a movie theater and a swimming pool.

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By

Liz Moyer

Nov. 9, 2014 6:32 p.m. ET

When Tyler Allen agreed to fork over $3 million in cash for a luxury condominium near Concordia, Kan., he wasn’t attracted by the indoor swimming pool, 17-seat movie theater, or hydroponic vegetable garden.

Armored doors

The real selling point of the 1,820-square-foot apartment: It will be buried 174 feet underground in a decommissioned missile silo sturdy enough to withstand a nuclear attack.

Mr. Allen, a 45-year-old Orlando, Fla., sports bar and nightclub owner, insists he isn’t a “tinfoil hat-wearing” type preparing for the end of the world.

“There’s a Camp David for the president,” he says. “If you’re at a certain level where you can afford it, you can get that, too.”

The so-called Survival Condo complex boasts full and half-floor units that cost $1.5 million to $3 million each. The building can accommodate up to 75 people, and buyers include doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs, says developer Larry Hall.

Mr. Hall, who lives in a Denver suburb, bought his first missile-silo site in Kansas in 2008 and completed construction in December 2012. A year later, he says, the development had sold out. Work on the second security compound—the one where Mr. Allen bought a unit—is under way, and Mr. Hall says he is considering additional sites in Texas and elsewhere.

As former nuclear missile sites built under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers, the structures were originally designed to withstand a direct hit by a nuclear bomb. At ground level, they can be sealed up by two armored doors weighing 16,000 pounds each. Mr. Hall added sophisticated water and air-treatment facilities, state-of-the-art computer network technology and several alternate power generation capabilities.

The projects tap into an undercurrent of angst among some affluent folks that has persisted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The global financial crisis and now the possible dangers posed by the Ebola virus and the rise of Islamic State have fueled their safety concerns.

The condos, his company claims, can make it possible to lead an uninterrupted life of luxury underground. In addition to the standard perks—which also include a spa, dog park, fitness center and medical facilities—the complex has enough emergency food on hand to last for up to five years. There’s also a holding cell for unruly occupants.

Individual units have 9-foot ceilings. Lighting mimics sunlight as much as possible. In place of windows, there are video screens that can exhibit a resident’s choice of scenery, from landscapes to urban skylines.

Unlike Mr. Allen, most of the owners don’t want to go on the record about their involvement.

One executive of a Connecticut tobacco-product firm says he paid $12 million in cash for four entire floors of the first silo-condo complex—enough space to accommodate his large family and several friends. He hired a decorator and equipped his four full floors with fireplaces, antique furniture and more “windows” than the space originally offered.

“I look at is as a life insurance policy,” he says, adding that he plans to use the uber-bunker only in a dire emergency. He says his wife, however, “hates the idea” and refuses to set foot in the place—“for now.”

Spending on residential security rose from $7 billion in 2001 to $12 billion in 2011, and is projected to climb above $16 billion in 2016, according to Freedonia Group, a market-research firm based in Cleveland. That covers everything from routine security devices to the kind of reinforced chambers that gained widespread attention more than a decade ago and were featured in the 2002 film “Panic Room.”

One finance type, who declined to be named, transformed a 350-odd-square-foot closet in his family’s Manhattan cooperative into a retreat in case of a home invasion or other emergency.

An armored door to the room can allegedly withstand rifle fire, and the suite is equipped with its own power source and air-scrubbing equipment that could sustain occupants for up to 72 hours. It is stocked with food, purified water, a portable gas range, first aid supplies and games. The cost: close to $100,000, according to Insite Security, the New York firm that supervised the project.

The silo projects, meanwhile, take the safe-room concept to another level. Mr. Hall says the facilities will provide armored transportation if owners get to the local airport or anywhere within 400 miles of the silo. An armed guard protects the entrance to the completed complex around the clock.

Mr. Hall and his family spent the summer in theirs and returned for a brief stay in October. Lori Hall, his wife, admits the whole concept takes a little getting used to. “At first it was a little taboo to talk about, and people did think we were kind of crazy,” she allows.

Amy Sprague, a neighbor of Mr. Hall and a friend of his wife, admits she was “flabbergasted” a year ago when she first heard details about the project. “It sounded scary, dark and cold like a hole in the ground,” she recalls. “I was very confused by it. Dumbfounded.”

She and her family did, however, accept an invitation to visit one night earlier this year. That afternoon and evening, the families made s’mores outside the silo over a campfire and the children hunted for fossils and other treasures in the surrounding fields.

“It was a lot larger than I expected,” says Ms. Sprague. “My kids thought it was better than Disney.”

Mexican President Felipe Calderon for supporting the removal of all weapons from civilian hands while doing next to nothing about the drug cartels–who have all the guns they want, and then using the Aurora, Colorado tragedy to scold the U.S. for poor gun laws.

To be completely fair, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder did (I believe) have his hands in the transport of U.S. weapons across the border into Mexico and into the hands of drug cartel members. Operation “Fast and Furious” not only aided the cartels but left one U.S. Border Patrol agent dead. –SB

Felipe Calderón’s Arrogant Call for U.S. Gun Control

The blood had barely dried in the tragic Aurora, Colorado, shooting before Mexican president Felipe Calderón put the blame on permissive U.S. gun laws. In a post on his Twitter account, Calderón offered his condolences to the victims but then added that the incident showed that “the American Congress must review its mistaken legislation on guns. It’s doing damage to us all.”

It was hardly a new theme from Mexico’s lame-duck president. But his latest statement requires an extraordinary amount of gall. During Calderón’s presidency, more than fifty thousand of his people have died in the war on drugs that he chose to escalate. A foreign leader with that awful of a track record daring to lecture the United States on its policies regarding firearms is not likely to sit well with most Americans.

But Calderón repeatedly has blamed U.S. gun laws rather than his decision to launch a military-led offensive against the drug cartels for the resulting violence in his country. The Mexican government even posted a massive sign on the border with the United States between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso reading “No More Weapons!” The sign was made from recycled guns seized by Mexican security forces.

But the location of that sign undercuts Calderón’s own argument. Juarez has been for the past five years the epicenter of gun violence in Mexico. Yet El Paso has a very low violent-crime rate. If “lax” U.S. gun laws were the cause of the carnage in Juarez, wouldn’t El Paso also be awash in blood? Some other factor must account for the extraordinary violence south of the border.

Extensiveresearchon restrictive gun laws in both U.S. and foreign jurisdictions shows no correlation between tough laws and a decline in homicides and other crimes. Mexico’s own experience confirms that point. Following sometimes violent radical leftist challenges to the government in the late 1960s, Mexico enacted some of the strictest gun-control measures in the world. Today, it is nearly impossible for a civilian to possess a handgun or rifle legally in that country. Yet such tough restrictions have done nothing to disarm the drug gangs. In fact, those measures may have made it easier for cartel enforcers to terrorize portions of the country, since they don’t have to worry much about law-abiding civilians being armed and able to defend themselves and their families.

Conversely, the trend over the past decade or so in various jurisdictions throughout the United States toward conceal-carry and other permissive policies regarding firearms has not produced the surge of killings that gun-control zealots predicted. To the contrary, the rates of homicides and other violent crimes in most of those jurisdictions have actually gone down.

Calderón should have had the decency not to exploit the Aurora tragedy to push his misguided gun-control agenda for the United States. During his remaining months in office, he should instead focus on easing the suffering that his policies have caused in his own country.